BAND-MAID: “Thrill” Was Supposed to Be Their Last Release. Mexico to Budokan

This article is also available in Japanese: Read the Japanese version

Five people in maid outfits, slamming out hard rock. That gap between the look and the sound is what BAND-MAID is known for.

In fact, the members have revealed in an interview that about two years after the band formed, there were plans for the band to end. What stopped that, they say, was a single music video they put out on YouTube.

This article walks through the members and how the band formed, “Thrill” and the response from overseas, and on to the 2026 Nippon Budokan shows and the band's announcement of “a brief hiatus from live performances.” The channel numbers here are the values this site measured on November 1, 2026.

Who Are BAND-MAID's Members, and How Did the Band Form?

The official site's profile lists these five members: Miku Kobato (guitar/vocals), SAIKI (vocals), KANAMI (guitar), AKANE (drums) and MISA (bass). Two vocalists and two guitarists: a slightly unusual lineup.

The band started out in 2013. A 2016 ORICON interview (in Japanese) also introduces them as “BAND-MAID, which started out in 2013” (translated from the Japanese). The official site's January 2026 announcement also says, “In 2028, BAND-MAID will celebrate its 15th anniversary,” so the years line up.

How the members came together is explained by KANAMI in a 2015 interview with J-Generation. Kobato was looking for members, and KANAMI was invited to join; KANAMI then brought along a friend, AKANE, and AKANE in turn brought a friend, MISA. Last came vocalist SAIKI, who, in KANAMI's words, “joined through an audition.” So the instrumentalists came together as friends of friends, which is rather sweet.

If you are wondering about their real names or ages, the official profile lists neither. The member entries give only their stage names, their parts and their social accounts. As for marriage, no public announcement was found within what we checked on November 1 (the official profile and a search). That may be a bit of a letdown, but from here on we'll follow the band's story.

Why Hard Rock in Maid Outfits?

The idea came from Kobato. She looked back on it in the ORICON interview: “Originally I came up to Tokyo from Kumamoto because I wanted to do music, but while I was working at a maid café in Akihabara, I thought, ‘Wouldn't it be fun to play cool songs in cute maid outfits?’”

From there, she says, it hit her: “Maids in a band: ‘BAND-MAID’!” That was how it all began. In the same interview, though, she also said, “At first, I never thought our music would get this hard.” What set the direction was “Thrill,” a song on the band's first single, “Ai to Jonetsu no Matador” (“Matador of Love and Passion”). When they all played it together, Kobato says, “it just clicked: ‘This is it!’”

The maid concept carries right through to what they call their live shows. A live show is an “Okyuji,” the audience are “masters and princesses,” and going to a show is “coming home.”

Incidentally, Kobato only took up the guitar after starting BAND-MAID. In J-Generation's 2015 interview, she said, “I started to play the guitar after starting BAND-MAID, so it’s been about 2 years.”

About 11 years later, in a BARKS interview published in October 2026 (in Japanese), she reported that on the new song “ENTROPY,” “for the first time, Kobato took part in recording the backing guitar, po!” (translated from the Japanese). That “po” at the end is Kobato's trademark way of talking. The article notes “(Everyone applauds.)”, and KANAMI goes on to say that it was settled: “from now on, Kobato plays all the backing guitar.”

Someone who picked up the guitar only after starting the band has come this far. It was probably a big step for her, too.

The Most-Watched Video on the Official Channel: “Thrill”

BAND-MAID's official channel was created on October 22, 2013. When we measured it on November 1, 2026, it had 805,000 subscribers and a little over 309.65 million total views. That is consistent with the official profile's line about “official YouTube videos surpassing 300 million views.” On the same day, the channel page showed 180 videos.

The channel description is in English and includes the line “-An impossibly hard rocking maid band-”. It seems aimed at viewers outside Japan.

Judging by the titles, the videos are mostly music videos, live footage and teasers for new songs. The oldest of the videos we could list is the music video for “Thrill,” published on November 20, 2014. And as of November 1, “Thrill” was also the most-viewed of them. With a little over 23.95 million views, it was far ahead of No. 2, “REAL EXISTENCE” (published June 2015), at a little over 16.43 million. “Choose me” (June 2017) came third and “DICE” (March 2018) fourth, so the top of the list belongs to music videos from the 2010s.

Counting by year, through 2023 the channel posted between one and 10 videos a year. Then the numbers jumped: 37 in 2024 and 56 in 2025. Most of the increase is short videos of a minute or less. Of the 56 videos in 2025, 48 were 60 seconds or shorter, and 32 of those were teasers for new songs with “Teaser” in the title.

Videos tied to anime theme songs also stand out, including a video of KANAMI playing “Ready to Rock” and an “Official Talk Video” with Kazuki Ura and Kobato. Stacking up several teasers to build excitement every time a new song comes out: that seems to be how the channel is used now.

Was “Thrill” Supposed to Be Their Last Release?

In an October 2021 interview with TOKION, the members told a story about “Thrill” that, in their own words, they had “never really told” before.

Kobato opened with this: “Actually, BAND-MAID was about to end after two years of starting the band. But we were saved by our overseas audience, and we were able to continue as we were getting good responses from them.”

SAIKI added, “We’ve never really told this story before [laughs].” When the interviewer asked whether it was the “Thrill” MV, Kobato answered, “If we didn’t have that, the band was going to end.”

That said, the members were not agonizing over it at the time. According to SAIKI, the five of them only found out much later, when they were told, “that was going to be your last release.” Kobato says that one day the head of their agency told them out of the blue, and they were all surprised: “are you serious!?” SAIKI laughed about it: “Then, we all sighed, ‘aren’t we glad we made it further…’ [laughs]. So, we’re here all because of ‘Thrill.’”

So where did the overseas response come from? It started when Jrock Radio featured the “Thrill” MV. Kobato recalls, “All of the sudden, we had so many followers from abroad on our socials, and we were saying, ‘is our account hacked!?’” It was KANAMI who found out why.

What's more, according to SAIKI, Jrock Radio had apparently written to them, but “it was in English and our manager at that time thought it was a ‘bad’ email, so he just ignored it.” The band's fate being decided somewhere they knew nothing about makes for a curious story.

Note that within what this site searched, the story that the band was supposed to end could be confirmed only in this TOKION interview. Since the members themselves had rarely talked about it, it is perhaps no surprise that it doesn't turn up in other interviews.

Their First Solo Show Abroad: Mexico

The overseas response soon carried over to live shows, too. Their first Okyuji abroad was at Sakura-Con, an event held in Seattle on March 27, 2016. In the ORICON interview, Kobato recalled, “We were saying, ‘Maybe about 100 people? If 300 come, that's a huge success,’ but 10 times that many came.”

And the destination of their first solo show abroad was Mexico. In the TOKION interview, Kobato said, “When we were suddenly told, ‘you guys are playing in Mexico,’ our reaction was like, ‘what!? Mexico!?’” Back then, she says, they had more fans in Mexico than in the US.

It was a 1,000-capacity venue. They had never played a venue that big even in Japan, and they were saying, “what if they [our masters and princesses] were just up in the front row?” But “the actual show was packed.”

The band's story from there is summed up in the official profile. According to the official profile, “In 2019, BAND-MAID announced a touring partnership with Live Nation,” and the band “made their Hollywood debut in the 2021 Netflix film Kate.” The official profile also says their 2022 U.S. tour “attracted over 20,000 fans,” and that in 2023 they played four major international music festivals, including Lollapalooza.

Their ties with Mexico continued in 2026. According to an October 23 BARKS report (in Japanese), the North American leg of the world tour covered seven cities, from Chicago to Mexico City, and drew 10,000 people across all the shows. At the last stop, the Mexico City show on October 17, Daniela “Dany” of the Mexican hard rock band The Warning appeared onstage. Together they performed “SHOW THEM,” the collaboration released in 2024.

Before the song, the crowd reportedly broke into the chant “¡BAND-MAID, hermanas, ya son mexicanas!” BARKS translates it as “BAND-MAID, sisters, you are already Mexican!” (translated from BARKS's Japanese). Quite a welcome, in the country where they played their first solo show abroad.

The Budokan Show Canceled in 2021, and the 2026 “brief hiatus”

For BAND-MAID, the Nippon Budokan was a stage they had been scheduled to play once before. According to a January 2021 Real Sound article (in Japanese), the Budokan Okyuji planned for February 11, 2021, was canceled. In a statement, the members wrote that they had decided “the best choice we can make right now is to cancel” (translated from the Japanese). Along with the cancellation, it was announced that on the same day, February 11, they would hold a streamed Okyuji with no audience from another venue.

Then, on January 30, 2026, came big news in an announcement on the official site. BAND-MAID announced that following the two nights at the Nippon Budokan on November 13 and 14, it would “take a brief hiatus from live performances to prepare for our world domination.” The announcement says that “there will be no BAND-MAID live performances scheduled for the entire 2027,” that during the break “each member will continue to gather new inspiration and work on productions,” and that in 2028, the band's 15th anniversary year, “we will return.”

(This is the information as of November 1, 2026.)

In other words, only the live shows stop; the songwriting goes on. The only reason the announcement gives for the break is that it is “to prepare for our world domination.”

According to the page of the promoter, CREATIVEMAN (in Japanese), the two Budokan shows are listed to start at 6:00 p.m. JST on Friday, November 13, and 5:00 p.m. JST on Saturday, November 14, with all seats reserved at ¥11,000 (checked November 1). In the official site's October 31 update, November 14 was marked SOLD OUT and tickets for November 13 were on general sale.

In the BARKS interview, done at the end of summer just before they left for the US, SAIKI said: “We take on what's in front of us one thing at a time, and every time we clear one, we gain something from it. Linking those together becomes our own story.”

Kobato also said, “At first we really did feel that ‘everything is leading to the Budokan.’” But as things moved along, she went on, “it's become about much more than that, po.” Perhaps that means a tour once aimed only at the Budokan had, somewhere along the way, become something more.

Label and Management Company

Their major-label debut was the mini-album Brand New MAID, released on May 18, 2016.

In a Pony Canyon press release (in Japanese) in August 2025, it was announced that the EP SCOOOOOP would come out on October 22. The EP includes “Zen” (opening theme of ZENSHU), “Ready to Rock” (opening theme of Rock Is a Lady's Modesty) and “What is justice?” (ending theme of TOUGEN ANKI). With this many anime theme songs in a row, there are probably people who discovered BAND-MAID through anime.

On October 28, 2026, the single “SPIN” came out. According to a September Real Sound article (in Japanese), it is the ending theme for the new arc of the anime BEYBLADE X, the Bey Kingdom arc. The same article said the anime would stream from October 9, every Friday at 7 p.m. JST, on its official YouTube channel, BeyTube, and other services.

In the BARKS interview, the interviewer notes that SAIKI's lyrics are “about half Japanese and half English.” SAIKI revealed that because it is an anime popular overseas too, the anime side had told them they “didn't need to stick so much to Japanese.”

As for the company behind the band, the copyright line on the official site reads “MAIDIT.” However, whether MAIDIT is the band's management agency could not be confirmed from what the site shows. The page for the Budokan shows lists them as presented by CREATIVEMAN PRODUCTIONS, planned by BAND-MAID, in cooperation with PONY CANYON.

In Summary

A band dreamed up in an Akihabara maid café was found abroad through a single video, “Thrill,” and went on to be welcomed in Mexico as “already Mexican.” When you consider that there were plans for the band to end with that very release, it is a curious twist of fate.

In the official announcement of January 30, 2026, the band said it would “take a brief hiatus from live performances” after the two nights at the Nippon Budokan in November and return in 2028, the year of its 15th anniversary (as of November 1, 2026).

For another Japanese group with a big following abroad, see our BABYMETAL article (in Japanese). It covers how the titles of BABYMETAL's official YouTube videos became almost all English, which may make an interesting read alongside this one.